The Walking Dead has spawned a successful RPG video game, but Activision is also creating a first-person shooter version of the zombie apocalypse survival series. The design for this shooter is built around story and character, which is good, but as yet, we don’t have much to go on in the way of details. Especially worrying, the Gamescom presentation of The Walking Dead shooter didn’t feature hands-on play, or even more than screenshots. There’s also word that co-op play is out. Check out this article discussing the concerns about this upcoming shooter. IGN has the story.
While the zombies are mostly a background detail in The Walking Dead, a bit like the hurricane in a disaster movie, it is still a zombie game. Zombie games were made for co-op. Co-op is the lifeblood of zombie shooters.
A focused story is all well and good, but you can’t fistbump a dramatic twist or boot a telling revelation off a cliff when it isn’t looking. That’s what co-op is for. Hopefully, this new Walking Dead game will have a co-op mode lurking somewhere inside.
Hrmish. Walking Dead as a story also falls down thematically and doesn’t present a very coherent reason to keep watching. The RPG game was excellent and followed a story that diverged dramatically from the TV show, probably a good thing.
I’m not sure what went wrong with the FPS. We’ve seen numerous successful and interesting zombie-themed FPS games even RPGFPS hybrid so I’m going to have to look further into this to see where the burnout happened.